Back to the Future 2002.
Jim the Realtor starts the new year with a heads-up that the banks have started dumping their highest end San Diego County stuff onto the market; and the banks are looking for a deal that resembles 2002-2003. Back to the future when the Afghan war was young, Iraq was a swollen irritant but not much more than a foreign affairs debating point (like Yemen now) and the noise in Washington was Alan Greenspan fighting the recession with cheap money. In 2002-3 (early Bush), Hotel California caught fire in the listings, and Jim figures the big properties got an extra 20% in a year with all that cheap money (and the hedgies flying with financial stocks). You can check out -- but, man, you can never leave. The featured McMansion here was built in 2004 with an eye on a radiant future. The tenants have recently checked out without much to show for having been here -- California vapid chambers, with a dash of movie set, memory of heat, and way, way too much house.
What Does Ten Thousand Square Feet?
The details are stunning. Not only 9891 square feet, not only six bedrooms and 6.5 baths, not only one floor on a slab, but also built in 2004 in a miasma of high-living. The kidney shaped pool is absurd and so is the ballet dance mirror and the bar. Setting aside the genius of never giving a sucker an even break, what ten thousand square feet gets you in 2010 is markdown. The $3.25 million is high side, and note that a nearby two-story hacienda moved at $2.3 million (below). No Obama adminstration tax credits; no Fannie or Freddie here; no nothing but cash and a repositioning of the high end. Why does anyone want to live in this warehouse? Six bedrooms for what? Hotel California rents to Beijing asset managers on a rehab sabbatical (this resembles the Party prison for convicted grafters)?
Now Comes the Obama Administration Guessing Game. Bush? Clinton?
Bloomberg numbers tell me, via Courtney Schlisserman Wed 30, that economists are mixed on recovery. Hiring may have already started, as the productivity numbers are way up and the inventories are way down (not enough warm bodies on staff to meet breath of demand). Big stuff, Caterpillar and capital equipment. FedEx looks to a pickup in winter. We have stopped cliff-diving. We may be over downsized. Yet the healthcare, cap and trade, tax cut reversions (high end taxes will climb after Bush tax cuts abate) and the threat to tax stocks, all threaten hiring. Also, when the Obama administration finally faces the deficits for the re-election prep in 2011, it will toy with crushing small business with taxes. How this translates into high end REOs in SoCal is a mystery. Hotel California is going through another of its cyclical renovations. What built the slab-sited ten thousand footer in 2004 may not be coming back until well after 2020. How many condo rentals can be made out of six bedrooms and a pool? The Obama/Pelosi team rolling back tax cuts to pre-Bush now has an opening to roll back property to Late Clinton.
Don't know how you keep up with all the reading and writing you do to have such great guest every night.
If I remember correctly, "Hotel California" was an oblique rant against capitalism/consumerism (as most music back then was). As usual, we confused money with class. We watched Bill Clinton, whose presidency made him rich beyond his wildest dreams, utterly disgrace himself. We watched the Bush's - who were rich already - maintain a quiet dignity even under a hail of abuse. We consistently attacked what we thought was the easier target. Today, we have a president who is spending us into oblivion. The Hotel has become the nostalgic, but essentially worthless metaphor in a fire sale. Any house built on a mere body slab has no depth.
Our troubles began when AT&T bought off the old guard with early retirements. Then they rehired diversity by the numbers. It continued when we eased out the old lions on Wall Street with golden parachutes. Then we hired brash young guns and asked them to find new ways of cooking the books. It all worked out so well for us.
It all culminated, of course, with us printing a sign with the word “LEADER" on it and pinning it on the first black man to come down the pike. The only other requirement we were looking for was that he be capable of reading a teleprompter.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
THat is his job. We the common people have to do something else 40+ hours a week.
As far as Bush goes, he made enough mistakes to draw the ire of people that voted for him, like myself. He's an example of someone that delegates too much and entrusts things to people that aren't up to it. Remember his pick for homeland security Michael Brown? Harriet Myers for SCOTUS? Don Rumsfeld made a lot of mistakes too. Karl Rove gave us the big government spending of 2004 as a strategy for bush to win. Mission Accomplished? Putie? I could go on. I am not calling him an idiot as the left does, just someone that seemed too trusting of those under him and relied on the opinion of others too much, which is in contrast to the micromanaging of some on the left. I'd love to have a beer with W at a BBQ and shoot the breeze, I might even enjoy working for him, but he laid some eggs.
As far as Obama goes, he was a creation of Axelrod and the press. Call it synchronicity if you want, but it happened. It's an example of emotions leveraged by propaganda in dire times. We've seen with FDR and Hitler. We just haven't learned a damn thing.
It's just that compared to what we have now makes Bush - even bound and gagged, with cement shoes to boot - look like an Alvin Ailey performer. Put yourself in Bush's shoes for just a moment. It is my contention that the man became punch drunk at the end. I'll give you that Bush was never an action hero as Hollywood is apt to portray them. He was human - flesh and blood – same as you and I are.
No one with some shred of humanity could have withstood the constant vicious assault (that the Left mounted against him and managed for his 8 years in office) and remained in one wholesome piece. Bush bravely finished his term and went home (I think) a broken man. Who's to say he won't suffer from Alzheimer’s - the way Reagan did - later in life. The Oval Office has become a pissing contest. And we have come to understand it as our civic duty to hurl excrement at whoever happens to be in there.
I think W will be just fine. As long as he keeps away from the booze and keeps in shape. May be two terms is too much. A lot of presidents aged a lot when they got to their second term. If W had any problem it is that he was too nice, and didn't tell people off. Can you imagine Rudy on the job (or me for that matter. Italian American with the bona fides to boot. It would be nice to have someone in office that called a spade a spade)?
"Who's to say he won't suffer from Alzheimer’s - the way Reagan did - later in life." PK
I believe a person can get Alzheimer’s later in life from a trauma much earlier. If you remember, Reagan was shot in an assassination attempt. Of course, Bush may have been traumatized by the MSM, as I am.
Bush had two principal defects: He knew virtually nothing, neither history, economics, demographics, nor geography, and his instincts were not merely bad but terrible. The intersection of those two flaws in the Presidency at a crucial time in our history resulted in a slow-motion catastrophe that this country will likely never recover from.
I don't know Ken. Was it that he didn't know, didn't care, or didn't agree? W is a mystery at times, as Reagan proved to be for some. Ronnie was a lot better informed than most gave him credit for. I don't know about W. With Obama, he has his own agenda, irrespective of whatever is going on. So he may be informed, but like a pseudojuggernaut, he marches on to implement his fabian dream. I don't think W. Was so ideologically centered. Considering he is supposed to have an IQ of 130 (Kerry 125, Obama?, Kennedy 118), he can't be a dope, but I guess IQ has little if nothing to do with getting to be president. Shoot, mine is higher than those I listed and I don't even manage people. Sometimes I think being a politician requires more of a sociopathic/narcissistic personality, independent of intelligence. Just look good in front of a camera.
Yes, I know that Bush has a fairly impressive IQ , but keep in mind that he spent most of his formative years drinking and likely doing blow as well. He obviously retained little of whatever he supposedly studied in prep school and college. This wouldn't necessarily have been fatal to his Presidency had he surrounded himself with knowledgeable and realistic advisers and then heeded their words, but instead he ended up with those godawful hawks and Neocons.
I agree with you on Reagan, although I, a onetime admirer, now scorn that smart man's inexplicable failure to halt illegal immigration back when the political difficulties would have been comparatively minor, the way Eisenhower did in his day. Perhaps the Gipper was too disracted by apocalyptic fantasies of an imaginary Red Dawn-style invasion to deal with the actual invasion of our southern flank. This blunder has already ruined California politically, socially, and economically, and I am quite sure that unless a miraculous political turnaround takes place that the rest of the country will suffer the same fate over the next two decades.
As for IQ and the Oval Office, I think that you will find that--Tricky Dick excepted--most Presidents typically score in the 120s. (Psychometricians consider 120 the minimum score required to be a college professor.) As the British Army knows, an IQ gap much larger than twenty points makes communication difficult more difficult between bright and dull, and so prefer that their officers not have IQs vastly higher than that of their enlisted men. A candidate with extremely high intelligence would likely find the experience of having to explain himself to the public too frustrating, and would probably just leave the average voter feeling talked down to--not exactly a formula for electoral success.
For that reason, incidentally, mass democracy seems unlikely to be a workable concept in the long run. It also means that Mr. Batchelor will never be on a fiftieth as many stations as Rush Limbaugh.
We've probably had a few presidents in the genius range (150+): Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt. May be Adams, may be not (they say Clinton was around 140, and he communicated well). As far as talking down, one of the smartest theoretical physicists that lived and taught was Richard Feynman. He had the great skill of explaining the very complicated in terms most people could understand. Same with Sagan and Hawking.
As far as Rush goes, I think he's smarter than a lot of people give him credit for. He may not be as classically educated, but he's very smart. Is he as smart as JB? Probably not, but JB isn't pitching for popularity, certainly not in the way or manner that Rush is. JB is like NPR for the right wing, and not quite as pretentious. For me, he is a breath of fresh air and depth to any discussion. Insofar as intelligence and broadcasting goes, Michael Weiner must be pretty smart too. He has a PhD from Berkeley, no? Then again Hannity, the didactic repetitive windbag does well. Sometimes I think chance and entropy figure in as well as anything else. :)
>We've probably had a few presidents in the genius range (150+): Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt. May be Adams, may be not (they say Clinton was around 140, and he communicated well).
The charming rogue Clinton was, like the less charming rogue Nixon, an outlier in many respects. As for Jefferson and his ilk, well, wasn't the franchise a lot more restricted in those days?
My vote for most likely near-genius President: Calvin Coolidge. He's the only one who's had sense enough to keep quiet and out of other people's business.
I agree about Teddy Roosevelt having been smart - too smart for his own good. Control freak. Lincoln, a real diamond in the ruff.
Quite right about Coolidge. Translated some Dante, good with the one-liners, less bloodthirsty than most Presidents.
In a marvelous essay on Teddy Roosevelt, *Gore Vidal wrote*, "Give a sissy a gun and he will kill everything in sight." Certainly this was true of war-lover Teddy. Also, TR was smart enough to acquire an empire for this country, but not smart to see that that was a terrible idea. A typical Republican, in other words.
Mysteriously, Honest Abe's hagiographers never seem to get around to asking why America was the only Western country that found it necessary to slaughter hundreds of thousands of its own citizens in order to abolish slavery. Even the Brazilians did better.
Restricted? Only in that the cream rose to the top. At least compared to today. Today we have a slightly different playing field (MSM, TV, Radio, Internet, etc) and I'd have to wonder how those folks would have faired. Calvin was a decent man, but broken after his son's death. I like Calvin too. TR was more than just a control freak. He could talk on any subject (he read up to two books a day. He had a photographic memory and could quote from a book he read years before.), communicate with people from all walks of life, and had self-confidence not found in most people, and one that was tested. I think he would have been an even better president later in life, when he acquired some wisdom. Unfortunately, he left too soon. Lincoln was an interesting cat. A Mark Twain sense of humor, but probably darker. Both TR and Lincoln pushed the power of the federal government to new heights though. Jefferson was an original.
The Hotel California does not serve Wine? I'm leaving for The Hotel Burj Al Arab in Dubai! I'll take my Helicopter right to the rooftop helipad. Send up a bellhop to collect my bags,
......What do you mean I can never leave? I've got ocean views! Travertine bathrooms! Granite and Maple in the Kitchen! Heated Whirlpool Spa! Closets, Closets, Closets! It's a steal at only 3.5 mil.... Hey! Someone just took my Helicopter! And my Bimmer is gone!
Gore Vidal calling a TR a sissy is like Elton John calling Tiger Woods a homosexual. I prefer Edmund Morris' works on TR. As far as Brazil goes, they have their own problems which are far worse than ours in some ways. While it might be nice to think the civil war didn't have to happen, it ignores the concepts of inevitability and synchronicity. It wasn't solved in 1789, and it took over half a century to ferment.
Perhaps, like most Americans, you are more familiar with Gore Vidal's acerbic television persona than with his writings. If so, read any of his essay collections for a glimpse of how an absolutely first-rate critical intelligence operates, and read his Chronicles of Empire novels, such as "Burr," "Lincoln," and "Empire," for wonderful entertainment of a very high order.
Given his age, Vidal will be gone soon, and we will be much the poorer for his departure, not just due to his genius, but also because he is--despite the slanders of his inferiors, such as William Buckley--an old school patriot who genuinely loves this country.
William Buckley his inferior...That is funny.
I have read quite a bit of both men's work, and consider it to be self-evident that Vidal was by far the superior writer.
Subsequent events showed that Vidal was correct to oppose the Iraq war, while Buckley was disastrously wrong to go along with it. (The latter retracted his support after the fact.)
Most people seem to be under the impression that Buckley had a great deal of family money that he used to fund his lavish lifestyle. Rather, National Review--and by extension its idealistic conservative donors--unknowingly paid for Buckley's swanky Manhattan digs, skiing in Gstaad, the sailing trips, and so on. Contrast that with Vidal, who, while he never claimed to be a paragon of virtue, did at least make his own living from age nineteen on.
Worst of all, Buckley helped purge genuine conservatives such as Pat Buchanan from the mainstream of the Republican Party, turning it over to the Neocons and other sharp operators just so he could get invited to the right cocktail parties.
I know this is a bit of a non-sequitur, but I really enjoyed the writings of both Ambrose Bierce (his detailed account of the Battle of Shiloh, for example) and H.L. Mencken. I can just imagine what HL would say about the likes of Janet Napolitano.
You're no more off-topic than I am. Anyway, when it comes to California real estate, what is there to say, really?
I confess that I've read virtually no Mencken, although I gather that his work is, like Shakespeare's, "full of quotes." Any tips on where to begin?
As for the soon-to-be-former Director of Homeland Security, I recently heard tell that the Orwellian cameras that she ordered installed along Arizona's highways when she was governor there have been a big flop. Who would have guessed? A career on the gator-rasslin' circuit sounds about right for Miss Napolitano.
Northrop Grumman moving HQ to DC area. SAIC just left San Diego recently. HUGE blow to California economy. Virginia or Maryland will be top bidders, I expect the Old Dominion to win.
Silicon Valley Exodus next?
Feinstein and Boxer were never fans of the Pentagon or Defense contractors.
If Corporate taxes rise, expect California to be similar to NYC of 1978, taking 20 years to recover, but the loss of Corporate HQs in NYC has never recovered.
I believe there's a book called "The H.L. Mencken Reader" that is a good collection of his writings.
Buckley also didn't like Ayn Rand.
Mark Steyn would be a good modern equivalent.